exinda 7 tips to reduce network congestion

8/12/2019 Exinda 7 Tips to Reduce Network Congestion

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Whitepaper:

7 Tips to ReduceNetwork Congestion



7 Tips to Reduce Network Congestion

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Summary

Today’s enterprise networks are facing unprecedented demands – streaming video, employee-owned mobile

devices, and collaboration tools are all contributing to far more traffic than email, FTP and general web surfing

produced just a few years ago. When you consider that business IP traffic is projected to increase at a compoundannual growth rate of 21% from 2012 to 2017 – that’s faster than IP WAN (13%) but only a fraction of the

projected growth rate for mobile business Internet (59%). As more devices enter the network and generate these

forecasted levels of activity, the corporate IT environment will only get harder to manage.

What does this mean for IT administrators? Increased usage leads to networks that are congested and can’t scale,

and frustrated end users who just want their applications to perform better and faster. IT managers responsible

for solving network congestion problems often resort to one of three approaches: adding bandwidth,

accelerating network traffic, or cutting off access to applications believed to be causing congestion.

Adding bandwidth can address the issue, but it ’s a short-term fix that creates two problems. First, because

network usage continues to increase, IT budgets also continue to increase in perpetuity, which isn’t sustainable.

Second, increases in bandwidth demand have outpaced decreases in bandwidth cost. Just adding bandwidth

treats all applications the same – from strategic business apps to visits to YouTube. In effect, network

administrators are funding the increases in recreational traffic, which only temporarily and partially solves

the congestion problem.

Another common approach is application acceleration. Some companies invest in solutions that accelerate

everything on the network, including unwanted and unproductive recreational traffic. Just like adding more

bandwidth, this approach treats all traffic the same. In a sense, businesses are spending money to improve not

only the speed of their critical applications, but their recreational applications as well.

Finally, cutting off access to applications believed to be causing congestion is not feasible either. Sure, you will

want to control users watching cat videos on YouTube, however, the CEO could also be utilizing video for a demo

on the fiscal results call. Treating all users and use cases the same is a partial, inelegant solution at best.

To reduce network congestion without funding inefficient solutions or imposing heavy-handed restrictions

on users, companies need to manage traffic across five key dimensions of the network – users, apps, devices,

locations, and activities. Doing so enables network managers to create specific policies that optimize and protect

the performance of business-critical applications, white limiting the impact of recreational traffic. By taking this

approach, network managers can reclaim bandwidth for strategic applications and reduce overall network costs.

Below are seven tips you can add to your network managementtoolkit today to reduce network congestion:

1. Look into the network: What’s the problem? Who’s causing it? The first step in solving congestion problems and improving network performance is determining what’s causing

the congestion. Find out which applications are in use, how much traffic is generated by each, and decide how

important these applications are to the needs of the business.

Identify whether there are high traffic periods during the day or month and whether some applications have

special quality of service requirements. Without an accurate understanding of current traffic on the network, any

action to relieve congestion will only be a guess.




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2. Reduce traffic via cachingCache frequently accessed web objects locally so only new ones are downloaded. If multiple requests are made

for the same objects multiple times, overall bandwidth consumption increases. For instance, patch bundles or

software upgrades can be downloaded from an external site once, and subsequent requests will benefit from

proximity. Multiple users attempting to download the same file can seriously impact network performance and

take away from business-critical applications. Using caching strategically can improve performance and lower

bandwidth utilization.

3. Control Recreational TrafficPlace limits on the amount of recreational traffic that can be consumed during work hours. You can still allow

access to recreational sites, but give priority to business applications. Even if your company’s web policy allows

personal and recreational use, non-business content can become an unneeded burden on the network. Through

real time monitoring and policy-based shaping, network resources can be assured for business-critical needs.

4. Time-shift your network Are certain applications regularly used at defined times? Create policies that reflect this, and shift network

resources to these applications as needed. Analysis of the applications in use and the nature of the traffic theygenerate can uncover groups that compete for scarce resources and indicate whether they would benefit from

simple scheduling changes. For instance, backup windows could be adjusted to prevent interfering with batch

data transfers or replication transports. This reduction in network contention can significantly improve end-to-

end performance and usability.

5. Don’t treat all business traffic the sameCategorize traffic into three buckets:

Reputational: items that would have a direct impact on current or future business, based on customer

perceptions about availability and performance.

Revenue-affecting: Items that would prevent or decrease the amount or rate of income, whether based

on sales or production/fulfillment.

Mission-critical internal: Items that are necessary to support functions not purely customer-facing or

profit-generating but that are needed for daily operations and ongoing business functions.

Reputational traffic should be the initial focus, but not to the detriment of the remaining traffic.

6. Manage and prioritize at a user levelDetermine who the user is and what application is being used. Is the CEO using videoconferencing to speak to

key investors? Where is the user? Is he logged in remotely?

7. After analyzing traffic on the network, create an intelligent policyAllocate network resources based on a predetermined set of criteria. For instance, during the hour that the CEO

is making a video-conferencing call, 40% of the organization’s available bandwidth might be allocated to the call,

while 15% is allocated to a marketing video and the other 45% is dedicated to other activities.




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Exinda is a leading global supplier of WAN solutions that enablesorganizations to assure a predictable user experience for strategicbusiness applications through policy-based WAN orchestration. Exindasolutions intelligently allocate network bandwidth and optimize traffic basedon the priorities of the business. The company has helped more than 3,500organizations in over 80 countries worldwide assure application performance,improve the end-user experience, contain recreational applications and reducenetwork operating costs for the IT executive.

For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

About Exinda

WhitePaper_7 Tips to Reduce Network Congestion

Copyright 2014, Exinda Networks Inc.

www.exinda.com1.877.439.4632

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WAN Performance Is Critical

As the network’s importance as a strategic business asset has grown, it’s also gotten a lot more difficult to manage.

Networks are far more complex today than ever before, and the top problems IT departments deal with on a daily

basis are much harder to solve. In fact, 34% of IT managers say troubleshooting network problems like alleviatingcongestion is their biggest challenge today. Eliminating network congestion begins with implementing an

intelligent network management tool that can monitor and analyze traffic patterns on the network in real time.

Despite the need for this functionality, only 35% of IT managers have invested in such a tool, while 81% have

increased bandwidth capacity.

Some IT managers have turned to WAN optimization appliances in an attempt to reduce network congestion and

improve network performance via compression and acceleration techniques. However, a tool that was designed

10 years ago that only focuses on making the network faster is not enough to solve network congestion problems

today. WAN optimization solutions were not built to manage streaming video, mobile devices, or cloud-based

apps, all of which add to this growing network congestion problem.

To effectively solve today’s pressing IT problems, network managers must move beyond traditional WAN

optimization appliances and implement WAN orchestration solutions to repair network issues and deliver reliableuser experiences.

Orchestration solutions bring together all the most important features a WAN solution needs to solve complex

problems and makes them work in harmony. By combining analytics, purpose-built reports, a recommendation

engine and power actions like traffic shaping and application acceleration all in one platform, IT managers can

quickly pinpoint the source of delays and poor application response times, to resolve these issues quickly and

restore optimal service for end users.

For more information

To learn more about how you can orchestrate network resources to reduce congestion, please contact us to

speak with our team of network experts:

[email protected]

1-877-439-4632

exinda 7 tips to reduce network congestion

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